I beg to move,
That this House has considered Hertfordshire Greenbelt and the National Planning Policy Framework.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson. I especially welcome the opportunity to again bring threats to Hertfordshire’s green belt to the Minister’s attention. The importance of the green belt in my constituency and across Hertfordshire more broadly cannot be overstated. More than half of Hertfordshire is designated as being within the London metropolitan green belt.
Nationally, we have a housing crisis and an ecological crisis. When it comes to planning in the green belt, the answer is sustainable housing that responds to housing need, but that is not what the Government’s planning system delivers. It is developer-led, not community-led, it does not deliver the social homes that we need and it does not protect our green belt. Nationwide, of almost 18,000 homes built on the green belt, barely 10% were affordable. In my constituency, St Albans City and District Council is being asked to build more than 14,600 homes over the next 15 years. It can build 5,000 on brownfield land, so the remaining 9,000 will have to be built on the green belt. The neighbouring authority of Hertsmere wants to build 6,000 homes right on our border, removing the green belt altogether between two villages and creating a new monster-sized settlement, and the Conservative Government still want us to house a strategic rail freight interchange the size of 490 football pitches, which is also likely to attract thousands of lorries. Could this ever be described as sustainable development? No, it could not.
At the heart of the problem is the Government’s national planning policy framework. The Government have a standard methodology that produces top-down housing targets. Ministers have tried to tell me, in response to my many parliamentary questions on this matter, that their standard method for calculating housing does not produce targets per se, but is merely a starting point from which councils can start to work. I would be grateful if the Minister confirmed how many councils have submitted a successful local plan with a housing target that has been revised down from the standard method.
Those at the very top of Government tell us that the green belt will be protected. At the recent Conservative party conference, the Prime Minister himself promised that the homes we need will be built on brownfield sites and “not on green fields”. Indeed, the Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, the hon. Member for Harborough (Neil O’Brien), told the hon. Member for Watford (Dean Russell), who is present, in his debate last month that the national planning policy framework gives the necessary protections to green belt land when local authorities come to draw up their local plans, but I am afraid that that is simply not the case.
I give the example of Roundhouse Farm, near Colney Heath in my constituency. I understand, given the quasi-judicial role of the Secretary of State, that it is not appropriate for Ministers to comment on appeals under consideration, but this one has been concluded. St Albans District Council and Welwyn Hatfield District Council jointly refused permission for a development of 100 houses at Roundhouse Farm near Colney Heath, which is on the Hertfordshire green belt. Both councils, having regard to the national planning policy framework, considered that it would be damaging to the green belt to allow an inappropriate development such as that to proceed. The Minister’s planning inspector disagreed, and yet another chunk of precious green-belt land was given over to development. The inspector gave more weight to the calculation of housing need under the Government’s standard method than to the protection of the green belt.
In setting out the reasons for overturning the decision, the planning inspector said:
“I am aware of the Written Ministerial Statement of December 2015 which indicates that unmet need is unlikely to clearly outweigh harm to Green Belt and any other harm so as to establish very special circumstances. However”—
this is the critical line—
“I note that this provision has not been incorporated within the Framework which has subsequently been updated and similar guidance within the Planning Practice Guidance has been removed. I can therefore see no reason to give this anything other than little weight as a material consideration.”
That is to say that he gave little weight to the green belt. The inspector’s appeal decision went on to say:
“I afford very substantial weight to the provision of market housing which would make a positive contribution to the supply of market housing in both local authority areas.”
If the Government genuinely believe that there are sufficient protections for the green belt in the national planning policy framework, I would be grateful if the Minister explained to me and my constituents how that decision came to be overturned by the Secretary of State on the recommendation of the planning inspector. I would be grateful to know whether the Minister accepts the planning inspector’s conclusion that the provision to protect the green belt has not been incorporated within the national planning policy framework, and that similar protections within the planning practice guidance have been removed. If the Minister does accept those findings from the planning inspector, I would be grateful to hear whether the Government intend to rectify the situation.
Following the shock decision, I asked the Secretary of State to intervene and urgently issue guidance to the planning inspector on determining appeals. This would mean attaching greater weight to the objective of protecting green belt than to the standard housing need method of calculation. When I asked this question, I got the following reply from the Government:
“The Government is firmly committed to protecting and enhancing Green Belt land for future generations as set out in our manifesto. That is why, for decision-taking, local authorities should regard the construction of buildings in the Green Belt as inappropriate and refuse planning permission, unless there are exceptional circumstances as determined by the local authority.”
However, the two local authorities in this case did precisely that but had their refusal overturned anyway. I would be grateful to understand whether the Minister now accepts that the national planning policy framework is simply not fit for the purpose of protecting our precious green-belt land. It must be updated without further delay, and new guidance should be issued to the planning inspector. I have outlined just one example of local authorities doing everything within their power to protect our natural environment and having their decisions overturned by the same Government who profess to be its protector, but I am sure there are countless others.
Let me turn briefly to the standard method and the green belt weighting. At some stage, every council in Hertfordshire will have to make a judgment call. Either they have to come up with a local plan that meets central targets and they have to wave goodbye to the green belt, or they have to try to call the Government’s bluff, claim exceptional circumstances to protect the green belt, and wait and see what the planning inspector says. However, the problem is that the planning inspector may well take their powers away altogether. Council leaders accept that that would almost certainly leave communities in a weaker position than they are in now, and any canny developer would immediately put in an application for the sites that we most want to protect. The situation is deeply unsatisfactory.
As we have discovered, the Government’s repeated claim that the standard method of calculation does not produce centrally imposed targets just does not stand up to scrutiny. In fact, the planning inspector’s day-to-day interpretation of the national planning policy framework shows that that is exactly how the targets are being treated. I ask the Minister again: will he commit to urgently issue guidance to the planning inspector that has principles for protecting the green belt? Will he ensure that those principles are given more weight when deciding appeals and examining local plans, and that they are given more weight than the arbitrary numbers that are being reached through the standard method of calculation? I ask him to do so urgently, as yet another Hertfordshire district has just put out its draft local plan for consultation.
Hertsmere Borough Council proposes bulldozing over a substantial swathe of the green-belt land that sits between two villages in my constituency. The shocking proposal for Bowmans Cross would see the effective conjoining of London Colney and Colney Heath. The plan would mean that 6,000 houses fall slap bang in the middle of fields and natural habitats that currently surround and separate the two communities. The impact of that monster development would not be felt by the residents in Hertsmere; it would be felt by my constituents in St Albans. None the less, I cannot help but have some sympathy for yet another Conservative-led council that has felt the pressure from its Conservative Government to meet their huge top-down housing targets.
I am more than aware of the critical shortage of housing supply in the country. Liberal Democrats are absolutely committed to providing the truly affordable new homes that are so desperately needed, and in St Albans I am proud that the Liberal Democrat-run district council is driving ahead to build those social homes. However, across Hertfordshire, Liberal Democrat-run and Conservative-run councils alike are all in the same position. Conservative-led Broxbourne has given up 15% of its district’s total green-belt land. That is more green-belt land sacrificed than in any other council in England. Research by the Campaign to Protect Rural England recently found that, in addition to the 17,500 homes that have already been approved or are being built on Hertfordshire’s green belt, more than 50,000 extra have been proposed.
To be clear, I am not asking for the Government to stop building; I am asking for the Government to strike the right balance and create a planning framework that delivers sustainable development. It is in the Government’s gift to do that by updating the national planning policy framework and the guidance as I have described. I hope that the Government will take this up without any further delay.